Treating Dry Rough Patches on Your Knees

Some people complain about dry rough knees and no moisturizer in the world is able to help them, what is the problem? The reason that they are calling their knees dry is because they are seeing all of these flakes and the skin seems a little bit thickened. Flaking often does mean dry skin but flaking really is a final result of many different processes one of which is inflammation of the skin and another is thickening of the skin, because in fact when the skin is injured it protects itself in one of two different ways. It either thickens or it darkens.

In this case the knees are often the brunt of many different injuries from just kneeling and rubbing the knees tend to thicken and that thickened skin then develops these flakes.

So in fact the solution for these “dry” (but they are really not dry) knees is an exfoliant to try to eat through and dissolve the thickened skin, it is almost like a callous.

Interesting, this problem seems to more common amongst mothers of toddlers because they are on their knees with the children and they spent more time on their knees and as a result of this they experience thickening of the skin.

So the next time if on your knees or even on your elbows you have what seems like dry skin that just won’t get better with moisturizers try a gentle chemical exfoliant to see if in fact that will not make the problem go away.

Many people mistake dry, rough patches on their knees for dry skin. However, there is usually another culprit. Dr. Schultz will explain.